How to protect employee experience by consolidating programs after an M&A

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are times of uncertainty, especially for employee experience. With nearly 40,000 M&A deals completed in 2023 worldwide (and even more projected by the end of 2024), caring for employee well-being greatly impacts the transition’s success.

While an M&A is great for many reasons—market expansion, diversification, competitive advantage and increased market share, cost savings and talent acquisition—the question remains: What’s the impact on team members and organizational culture?

HR leaders have an overwhelming responsibility to keep current employee experience programs running and choose which to merge. I hear it firsthand all the time. “We haven’t had time to focus on this initiative yet” or “we need to get all of our systems and processes set up first.” But unfortunately, the longer it takes to focus on employee experience, the greater the risk for turnover, low engagement and poor morale. Smart program consolidation solves many of these employee experience concerns.

Let's explore how to consolidate your employee experience programs, communicate the transition so it resonates and maintain morale.

A connected culture is better than independent employee programs

Before explaining how to build an effective employee experience during an M&A, here’s why it matters. In short: Program consolidation creates efficiencies, lowers costs, aids visibility and compliance, eliminates duplicate initiatives and waste, and improves the overall employee experience.

We find that companies tend to have silos and differing objectives within departments such as HR, Total Rewards, Shared Services, Compensation & Benefits, and Sales & Marketing. This leads to disparate programs throughout the organization. When it comes to an M&A, this means disparate programs to the nth degree—by cost center, department, business, location and role. On the surface, these programs might be operating with reasonable success, but they’re certainly not as efficient as you need them to be.

Another way to build cohesive employee experience solutions is to create a connected culture. This brings multiple programs under an effective connected message that ties to the organization’s overall mission, vision and overall purpose. Here are program solutions that work in alignment with a connected culture approach.

• Employee recognition
• Employee engagement platform
• Employer branding and communications
• Employee and corporate events
• Learning and development
• Milestone awards
  

When each program is contributing to a purpose-driven employee experience, employees feel the difference. Now let’s look at common program types to consolidate for success.

1. Consolidate communications and employer branding

Team members want to be “in the loop” during an M&A. Consider frequent, open communication via internal communications and organizational leaders as a need-to-have. Proper communication positively impacts team member trust, retention, culture and overall post-M&A success. In other words: what are you willing to do to keep your best people?

Gallup’s engagement survey found that less than half of U.S. employees know what’s expected of them at work, while only 32% say the mission or purpose of their company makes them feel that their job is important. 

Communicate your vision via parent company leadership

Share why the M&A is good for business during a formal internal announcement. Proactively answer expected employee questions and direct further questions to a designated leader. Internal communications directly impact team member loyalty.

Simon Sinek said it well in their book “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.” “If we learn to start with WHY, and share the reasons that we're passionate for our work, we give people an opportunity to connect with us on a deeper, more human level.”

Communicate your employer value proposition (EVP)

Branding can be confusing not only for customers but for employees. Who are we? Where do we say we work? Strong employer branding engages employees and turns them into brand advocates. It reduces costs and increases employee retention. Formulate a brand strategy and evolved employer value proposition.

Related: Why employer branding matters and how to improve yours 

2. Consolidate recognition and rewards

Employee recognition is a smart strategy for retention, especially during times of change. Reinforce or introduce an employee recognition program that consolidates initiatives like: 

• Value-based recognition
• Incentives
• Service anniversary
• Career milestones
• Learning and development 

Use a central recognition platform to spark engagement and loyalty

An engagement platform creates visibility and reveals team members’ contributions that could otherwise go unnoticed—via a live public feed or by cc’ing managers on every recognition. That’s a huge win given managers who are in the same location as employees still only have 30% visibility into the work being done, according to HR.com. 

Hear about one client’s success

After acquisitions amplified a broken employee recognition program, a Fortune 100 manufacturer collaborated with our team on a consolidated recognition platform to connect 200,000 global employees.

Post-launch, one program owner said, “We turned this [recognition] program on for the world. It’s not just one program. We shut down 12–14 IT tools, 6–7 vendors and moved our three biggest programs onto one platform.”

Employee feedback continues to validate the program’s success. “Thank you for making this program available, simple and with a large assortment of choices.” 

3. Consolidate employee incentives

Organizations run employee incentives for numerous reasons. To increase sales or productivity. To align employees with company goals and desired behaviors. To attract and retain talent. Or to reward professional development. 

The challenge is that we see too many organizations running incentives without any oversight or consistency, from rewards to measurement methods. For example, incentivizing employees (or a subset of employees) with cash bonuses, or replacing cash with gift cards, points or incentive travel. All reward methods should have a clear purpose, ROI and implementation period.

But the right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing. Or with an M&A, it’s more like an octopus, and three of the arms need to know what the other five are doing. Consolidation into one incentive platform gives you oversight, visibility and consistency. Plus, through measurement, you’ll see which incentives are truly working. This gives program decision-makers access to actionable data insights.

Related: Incentive solutions that drive behavior change (and simplify the participant and admin experience)

4. Consolidate employee and corporate events

During an M&A, one of the most effective ways to reach and align employees to the newly formed organization is to host an event. Here we go with that “why” again! Event strategy connects the why (business purpose) to the how (event design).

Map out the events that each of the newly merged or acquired organizations are doing. Then evaluate each event type for if it should serve employees of one or both organizations. Consider events such as:

• Sales kickoffs
• Annual company-wide meetings
• Town halls
• Leadership offsites
• President’s Club(s)
• Role-based meetings (e.g., store manager meetings)
• Country or regional meetings
• Employee Resource Group (ERG) events

Now assess the vendors, partners, suppliers and technology supporting each of these events. Make your first united event a standout experience with relevant, interactive experiences. Encourage employees to interact with your core values, understand the organization vision, get excited about the part they play and connect with each other.

5. Consolidate leadership development

None of the above consolidation strategies work during an M&A if leaders and managers aren’t on board—and in alignment.

To earn their buy-in for a streamlined leadership development program, start with employee surveys and focus groups that reveal immediate needs across the merged organization. Once you categorize employee feedback into training topics, present them to leadership who can champion the topics not only across the organization, but also with their respective teams. Respected managers within each company are also vital to championing a successful rollout and supporting a strong adoption.

Match employees’ learning styles with flexible training tools

Don’t underestimate the power of providing a comfortable space to learn and engage. With how dispersed your teams likely are, consider offering in-person, digital or blended trainings.

• Toolkits
• Virtual/augmented reality
• eLearning
• Learning and performance apps
• Virtual classrooms
• Workshops (in-person, digital or blended)
• Plug and play learning packages
• Training incentives
• Communications

6. Consolidate measurement and analytics

Beyond specific program consolidation is the mass of data you use to track the success of each program. And that in itself is worth consolidating.

When streamlining programs, establish KPIs with key decision-makers and analyze real-time metrics. In addition to typical user engagement metrics, consider implementing voice of the employee listening tools, like the Likert Scale, and gauging an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to understand employee opinions, attitudes and motivations. Employee sentiment like workplace resiliency, is extremely relevant during an M&A.

Build a consolidation road map

Consolidating all programs may not be feasible to take on all at once. That’s why developing a road map is crucial for collective clarity on which groups (leaders, managers, program decision-makers and employees) to engage and when. From there you can prioritize which programs demand attention first.

It’s also a good reminder that program consolidation isn’t only important during an M&A for your employee programs and initiatives, as much of this applies to your channel partners and customers. But start with your people first! When they thrive, your organization thrives.

Take our employee engagement program assessment to find out how well your programs align with employee needs and get complimentary resources to support your next steps.